I apologise for reviving this ancient thread, but I expect that various old friends will take a look when they notice it has come to life again.

To the point. I have just noticed that at No. 4 in the Top Reviewers list is one Fireball Dragon (not his real name, I imagine). Now, what interested me first was that he got to this exalted rank after only 198 reviews. That's right, 198. Not bad.

But, the second thing that struck me, MUCH more forcibly, was that almost all his reviews are short to the point of terseness.

Those of you who have longish memories will recall that I like short reviews, but whenever I ventured to suggest that other people might like short reviews too, I was told, often quite rudely, that people like LOOOONG reviews.

Well, I know that one swallow doesn't make a summer, but ponder this. On average, each of Fireball's reviews has garnered roughly 40 helpful votes. Nobody else comes anywhere near this figure. No 1 on the list, KM, gets 7. Yes, 7. PDH gets much the same.

Now I am not so optimistic as to expect an apology from anybody for the ordure that was heaped upon my head when I suggested that long reviews weren't what people wanted, but if some of those whom I used to describe as "the coven" ever read this, I should be very interested to hear their reaction.

Your reply to J. Forbes's post:

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I generally try to stay out of other people's arguments, but I hate to say it, J Forbes, I think you've just lined up your own pistol and shot yourself squarely in the foot with that argument.

Fireball Dragon has posted 198 reviews. These reviews have garnered 7,819 positive votes. Of those 7,819 positive votes, 6,725 are on two reviews. These are both reviews of Kindle Paperwhite products and these two reviews are, I would have considered, long.

So, on the remaining 196 reviews, Fireball Dragon has a 1,094 positive votes. Very respectable and kudos to him/her - but that's an average on those 196 reviews of under 6 positive votes per review.

Personally I don't have an opinion on whether reviews should be long, short, or inbetween. I think sometimes reviews make their own length by virtue partly of their type - e.g. books vs. cds vs. dvds vs. electronics. I don't personally care whether reviews are long or not.

For a moment I thought my argument about short reviews had been vindicated, but there you go. Life builds you up, then casts you down.

In a way I didn't really want to be right on this, because it would have been one in the eye for PDH, formerly referred to as Durward, but I have bowed to pressure on that for the sake of harmony. We get on well now, I am glad to say, when discussing music.